If you work in quality assurance, you're spending half your life in a game. But what if you lost track of the other half? Jennifer Estaris gives us a portrait of Myra, a game developer who takes her job a little too seriously.

That's quite an interesting and very philosophical observation. As we move closer and closer to artificial intelligence within our games, do our avatars then become mini people and we gods, both Puppeteers and Watchmakers? How far down the rabbit hole, as it were. I was surprised that the present tense worked so very well for this piece but it gave a very up-beat feeling to the writing style.

Hm, an issue I have thought of many times, and reflected upon myself as I flee the virtual world for the forests I lived in. Flee from the methods I used to flee from reality. Now this is advanced escapism.

As for the work in itself, it was quite vivid, so I liked it. The writing gets a bit stale at some places where the short sentences pile up.

This is a great piece to reflect on one's gaming self - our personality given unpredictable powers in a realm that we ourselves create. And I won't be able to destroy an A.I. without reflecting on them ever again.

Beautiful writing. The vacancy of the character, gradual unraveling of a life and slippery grasp of time are very reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk or Brett Easton Ellis. As the story builds to a crescendo in which the real and the artificial become inseperable, it is the skill of the writer which makes this read a real experience. I am in awe.

Thank you for the enjoyable read. The build up was, even though a bit slow, steady and worth the full story at the end. I felt like even though there was "resolution" at the end, I can't help from wondering if Myra is also just a player in someone else's giant game. Oh wait, she is... It shall really never end... This has inspired.

nikolstein:Thank you for the enjoyable read. The build up was, even though a bit slow, steady and worth the full story at the end. I felt like even though there was "resolution" at the end, I can't help from wondering if Myra is also just a player in someone else's giant game. Oh wait, she is... It shall really never end... This has inspired.

For God's sake, make a distinct line between work and your life :) AI's, VR's, 3D models, textures, spawning points are nothing, and they mean nothing to you, you'll forget they existed because no one knows but you, how a multiverse of your life looks like. Unshareable.

It also reminded me at some point at the past when i was in a coffee shop with some coworkers from a game company i worked as a coder at. For a few minutes i was staring outside at the sky and there was a long black telephone cable. For a while i was convinced that there was a texture misalignment in the skybox and this was a seam :-).

Well, it may be because of the linguistic differences, but somehow I was unable to enjoy this to it's full extent. It started out great, but somewhere in the middle it descended into a jumbled pile of short sentences that I was simply unable to fully comprehend. It was a very hard read.